How Many Travelers on the Road When No One’s Watching
On the left side of Route 1 heading north, just before the shore, an older man stood by the grill, cooking his breakfast in a pan. It was early in the morning. The white van he lived in was parked to the side. There were a few surfers in the water, but otherwise, it was only us.
I sat near him, on the wooden fence lining the end of the shore. There was nothing particularly remarkable about any of his movements, but a person who lacks peace recognizes it easily in those who harbor it. I saw a man who bore the untroubled grace of someone who’s known the roads for so long that nothing in life appeared to him in the same urgency. If he had plans for the day, they weren’t pressing. If there was something that had to be done, it could wait. Of course, it could have been anything: a doctor’s appointment, groceries to buy, a son to call. Perhaps he was planning to move elsewhere that day. But for now he was here, and it seemed it’d be that way for a long time.
I knew I could do the same, but it wasn’t just the van or Malibu. It wasn’t only the alluring solitude. It was something else that would take years to undo, and another thing that would take even longer to acquire.
The part I had to undo was the pace of life I’d been trained to adhere to but disrupting this would require a far greater effort than simply leaving behind the physical pacemakers. The watch, the phone, the laptop, all of these can be disposed, but the disconcerting complex is the one that has been built in us and not simply around us.
I am referring here to the mind clock carved in each of us from a very young age. It is this clock that disrupts our efforts to kill the strain of habit that keeps us bound in a rush, even when the reasons to justify it are no longer there. For this reason, even when we travel with the intention to rid ourselves of these confined, hurried spaces, we find ourselves bound to the same currency of time.
Then, there are those insistent networks that follow us, monitoring everything, weighing the visuals of our travels, mocking us with insistent images of places we haven’t seen. It’s no surprise that we return from our travels not with the quiet solace of the man in the white van, but with the tugging feeling of an unsatiated yearning, a desire left unanswered, baring the restless temperament of one obsessed with quantifying what was once and still could be the only way to hear the conversations of the soul.
But if we ever succeed in undoing our disastrous training, in divesting ourselves “of the holds that would hold [us]” then the task that follows will be the one that ultimately divides us into two categories, the traveler and the wanderer. Travelers expect something, whether it is definite or indefinite, but in truth, they seek some sort of reward for their efforts. A worthy sight, an enviable experience, a lover, a friend, a story, answers, anything, but it must be something. At the end of their travels, they expect to know what nameless force brought them there, and they’d like the answer to be delivered to them quite clearly.
I do not say this critically, but honestly. I too am part of this category. I’ve traveled for want of peace, silence, material for writing. I even went to places I thought would gather the loose strands of my life and shape it into a worthy product, that somehow, here, in this foreign city among the unfamiliar faces, something previously unknown would suddenly become known to me. I did this many times and I never understood why I returned emptier than when I had left, until I met the man in the white van.
He introduced me to the second category: the wanderers, and I use this term in the most literal manner. The latter are those who seek nothing, ask for nothing, see the roads, the sea, the mountains, a pear tree, and want only that. It’s not an imaginary or impossible category. I’ve seen many of them in the periphery of my travels, only briefly. Had I not been in such a hurry, and in want of so much from my travels, I would have read in the subtly of their gestures the unintentional messages they were delivering.
But once I became conscious of the two categories, I began to think that all the people I met on the road who lived in vans, boats, buses, or cars were part of this. Then I learned that many were simply imitating the aesthetics. The tattered clothes, the rustic vehicles, the basket of vegetables. But often it was nothing more than a mirage; come near it, and the delicately constructed illusion crumbles.
However, those that fall prey to this and think themselves far removed from society’s constrictive hold are not consciously attempting to fool anyone, but they, like me, are trying to arrive at the highest level of spiritual contentment through imitation. They know it has something to do with the road, the unsettling foreignness, the simplicity, the numbered belongings. But something is missing.
This is where we arrive at the second step: the renovation the soul has to undergo before it can take to the road with earnest. It’s a solitary pursuit, an agonizing effort, and it demands an unwavering willingness to dispose of the internal and the external holds that keeps us far removed from our travels. We learn to harness what has harnessed us. We conquer the clocks that have conquered us.
And the only way we can learn this is by observing those who have acquired it, or, never lost it to begin with. Children, for instance, who haven’t yet learned the language of time, whose days are measured only by contrast: the painful, seemingly endless captivity of the indoors with the freedom and brevity of the playtime outdoors. We can learn from the men on the road who have learned this. And when we do, we will understand what it means to stand firmly in the terminal of arrivals and departures and belong to neither.
